1. Technical Field.
The present invention relates to removing light surface articles, such as lint, dust, hair, and dandruff, from fabrics without manual effort. More particularly, it relates to a device to be attached or placed within the drum of a tumble type laundry dryer after some area(s) of the surface of said device is rendered adhesive by various methods to become capable of lifting lint and the like from the fabrics as the drum rotates.
2. Background Art.
The laundry finishing treatment of fabrics in a mechanical tumble-dryer with conditioning agents, such as fabric softeners, anti-wrinkling agents, anti-static compounds and other preparations designed to improve the properties of the treated material has been taught in several patents.
For examples, Gaiser, U.S. Pat. No. 3,895,128 and Kunzel et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,183,981 both disclose methods to condition fabrics which involve the utilization of articles on which removable conditioning agent is coated and from which the agent is transferred onto the fabrics by co-tumbling in a laundry dryer.
In Mizuno, U.S. Pat. No. 3,870,145, Mizuno, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,004,685, and Hendrickson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,254,139, instead of co-tumbling with the fabrics, the agent-containing articles are fixed to the inner surface of the dryer drum. The agent is transferred to the fabrics by repeated contact between the fabrics and the articles when the fabrics are tumbled in the dryer.
While the present invention also applies the same principle in treating the fabrics in the laundry tumble dryer, it is distinguished over the above-referenced prior art in that it is designed to remove lint, hair, dandruff and the like from the fabrics instead of imparting softness, anti-static, or other properties to the fabrics.
Utilization of an adhesive surface to remove lint and other light surface debris has been taught by Huber, U.S. Pat. No. 3,906,578 and McKay, U.S. Pat. No. 4,422,201. In the present invention, adhesively treated surfaces are also used to remove light debris from the fabrics. However, unlike the present invention, both devices disclosed by Huber and McKay are solely designed for manual use, and, as a result, are entirely unsuitable for, and incapable of, treating fabrics in a mechanical tumble-dryer.